Bleed Out
by eirabach
Summary: In war, victory rarely feels like winning. There are worse things to lose than battles. [TW: Character death]


_**AN: **Hi HTTYD fandom! How's it going? Just dipping my toe in here a minute…_

_This angsty stream-of-consciousness little drabble-y thing was inspired by a nasty sense of foreboding regarding HTTYD3. Character death (at best heavily implied). A touch gory. Hiccstrid, Rufflout (if you squint), and a single line paraphrased from How to Betray a Dragon's Hero._

_All credit to Cressida Cowell/Dreamworks. I'm just angsting in their sandpit._

* * *

He counted them out.

Hiccup remembers his father saying that about fishing craft one stormy night at the docks – another half taught lesson in chiefly duties that seems so much more important in retrospect.

_I counted them all out, son, and I'll count them all back in. _

Like most of his father's lessons it had gone right over his head - they could build more boats, they were always building more boats – but now he could merrily go back and punch his sixteen-year-old self in the face. It was never about the boats.

There are no boats here. Just men and dragons, ally and enemy, lying where they fell or wandering, dazed, through the dust and flames and bloodshed of a battlefield that Hiccup the Chief soars over on Toothless's heaving, glowing back. It's funny, but at this moment of their triumph, of _his_ triumph, he feels the least victorious he's ever felt in his life.

He'd not watched them during the battle itself, how could he? He'd been too busy concentrating on keeping Toothless airborne, both of them alive, and every enemy who came within twenty feet distinctly and permanently not so. He'd seen an axe fly past once, during a particularly hairy bit of hand to sword combat, and embed itself in his opponent's skull; heard Tuffnut whoop joyously at the largest of explosions; but the image he held in his head was that of the six of them lined up beside their dragons on the cliff top at Berk: Astrid, Eret and Fishlegs serious faced, Snotlout and the twins maniacal and grinning, but all looking older than they should be. Ready to die for their home. Their dragons. Their _chief_.

He's not ready. He's going to count them back in.

He spots Meatlug as she heads towards him from the foot of the mountains that rise up off to his right. She's hovering a little lopsided and he's no healer – dragon or no – but she looks alright otherwise, mostly. Fishlegs (that's _one_) is still on her back, pale and a bit lop-sided himself, his furs coated in something dark and sticky-looking. Hiccup wants to ask if he's hurt, but Fishlegs speaks first.

"You've got to come. You've got to come."

Fishlegs' voice doesn't shake. That's how Hiccup knows this is bad. The other man is beyond fear now, numbed and dull to it – the worst has already happened.

Toothless follows Meatlug back to the rocky ground at the mountain's edge. Hiccup has little to do with it, his heart palpitating with fear, his body leaden, his ears filled with an unholy screeching that turns his aching limbs to jelly. He sees Eret (_two_)first upon landing, looking lost but unharmed and standing a little way from what appears to be a bizarre dragon pile-up. The awful noise seems to be coming from beneath Stormfly, Skullcrusher and Barf and Belch; they add their own calls to it as Hiccup dismounts and Toothless approaches. Eret is speaking to Fishlegs but Hiccup can't hear a word over the damn racket. Toothless clambers over Barf, warbling, ears back, eyes huge; not controlling or silencing or being in any way a useful Alpha. Hiccup both wonders what he's missing and really, really doesn't want to know.

Astrid appears in front of him like a Valkyrie, all skulls and armour and bright blue eyes, and he's so glad (_three thank you Odin thank you thank you_) that he doesn't quite take in the look in her eyes. She holds out her hands to him, nods towards the lumpen mass of dragon.

"It's Hookfang," her voice is the only thing he's heard over the incessant shriek, "he's… they're trying to calm him down."

Hiccup takes her bloodstained hands in his and lets her lead him around the screaming heap. Tuffnut (_four_)moves out of their way, aware of their approach, but not turning towards them. His helmet is in his hands, face slack, and Hiccup sees that his attention is entirely on Ruffnut (_five_) – Ruffnut who is kneeling in a pool of gore, tearing strips from her clothing, and flinging useless obscenities and even more useless bandages at a bloody lump on the ground.

And Hiccup understands why Hookfang is screaming. Some part of him, deep inside, joins in. He's never going to get to six.

The lump rolls its one remaining eye towards him and he wants to run. Run and run until they are kids again and Valhalla is a joke and _you're not dying,  
_but the thing that was Snotlout gurgles from its mangled throat and draws Hiccup into the ever expanding boundaries of its lifeblood. Twenty two years of rivalry and insults and defiance and loyalty squelch under his boot and congeal in the joints of his metal leg. He wonders if it's weird, to watch somebody else's life flash in front of your eyes. He wonders if his throat is dry and his eyes are burning as a sign of a chief's respect for a warrior, or a cousin's kinship, or if, after everything, it's for the love of a friend.

There are words he's thought a thousand times but never thought he'd say, stopped by pride and arrogance on both their sides. Now they fall out half unbidden from chapped lips salty with the tears he never thought he'd shed.

"I couldn't have done it without you, Snotlout."

As the eye rolls shut, over Hookfang's misery and Ruffnut's furious denial, he's sure he hears:

"I know."


End file.
